Over the Rainbow
I’m here in my new old house with the color fan from Sherwin Williams in Edenton, trying to choose paint colors. The colors are riveted together like a big fan. When stacked and closed it’s 5 inches high! I’ve been looking at these colors all day. I’ve made definite, final, decisions. Six times! I’ve stuck the decisions on the walls of the rooms for oh, about 15 minutes; long enough to open the fan once more, second guess, change my mind, pull down the notes, and look some more. Now there are no decisions on any wall.
It isn’t complicated, not really. Just about everything is some shade of yellow. But, in the world of color, in the Sherwin Williams kingdom, yellow isn’t really yellow. Today I brought in a daffodil from outside and tried to find the colors. The petals turn out to be SW 0073 Chartreuse. The center is called SW 6907 Forsythia. Well, at least that sounds yellow.
I could change my palette to, say, blue. But there are more Blues than Chicago and Harlem put together. There’s no way to hurry this process. I’ll begin again in the morning with fresh eyes.
Some authors have told me they go through this with their characters. What color should her hair be? Will it matter? What color are his eyes? Is she going to care? Will skin tone be important to the story?
We have to be careful when we pick and choose our colors, don’t we? When I return again to Edenton, we’ll see how well I did at selecting the colors in this story. The writing, uh, color will be on the wall.